Monthly Archives: May 2010

These Virginia spring rains have offered several deliciously imaginative indoor play days at The Rose Garden. In Heaven on Earth I wrote about indoor play:

It is tempting to create our child’s playspace upstairs, or in the room around the corner. What we may find with a child younger than five, though, is that he gathers his toys and brings them wherever we are. Wherever the most traffic is, wherever life is lived the most, that is exactly where he wants to be. If the kitchen is the central place, with the dining room off the kitchen, this is the perfect place for him. If the living room adjoins the dining room, better still.

On a rainy day children have the long expanse of time to deepen into their play. Story lines can become complex and filled with the stuff of human dilemma. Or fanciful flights of imagination can arise. Let’s allow these rains to not only nurture our gardens, but our children’s creative imagination, as well. Relax and enjoy!

Young children are close to the realm of nature because they are still very natural beings. Because their consciousness is not yet separated from the environment, because they still live in the consciousness of oneness, of unity, they belong still to the natural world. In time they will belong to themselves, as the process of individuation becomes complete. But for about the first seven years, they are still at one with the world they inhabit. The process of separating from the parents and from the environment buds only around age seven. Before that, the child is moved along by life, something like the way a tree’s leaves dance in the breeze. The young child responds to the environment in a very unself-conscious way, a very natural way, and the open, complex, and diverse environment of the outdoors gives him that opportunity.

The single best gift a parent can give their children is to be attuned to them, to know what it feels like inside their skin, and to respond interactively from this “knowing.”The only way the child can learn toknow who they are is by having been “known” in this way by a parent.The only way a child can “see themselves” is by looking into the mirror of the parents’ heart, and see themselves reflected back.The greatest gift we can give our child is to carry this question in our hearts: “who is this soul, and who will they grow to become?” We carry this question with open wonder, attuning to them and helping to inform their human experience.Eventually as a young adult they can begin to carry this very most human question by themselves “Who am I?”By your loving presence, you help to shape the answer.